Avoid being badly written

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*I want to apologize for ALSO not doing the promo last night. I’m working through some health stuff, some … extended family bad news stuff. I’m also trying to figure out if it would be better as a permanent page. But still, sorry. – SAH*

My older son had a saying that always cracked me up when he was a teen: “Avoid being badly written.”

What did he mean by that?

Kind of what I mean by “avoid drinking your own ink” crossed with “Don’t make yourself into the kind of character who only wins because the Author is on his side. Because that’s not real life.”

It was an enormously wise and amazingly insightful view for a kid whose hormones were riding him hard, and though he often flung it at public figures’ antics, or his little brother’s more dramatic moments (This is from the time he nicknamed his brother Fidel Comix, so….) I think it was mostly self talk. The kind of talk we all try to do for ourselves and that the left seems to be unaware is even a possibility which is why we read their flounces and flinging about on X and scratch our heads and wonder if the sky is made of cheese in their world.

What brought this to mind today after a spectacularly bad night (Probably allergies, but if you are Catholic and want to pray to St. Jude on behalf of my brother, it would be much appreciated) was seeing the pictures the latest attempted presidential shooter took of himself before going on his “mission.”

My first reaction was to look at that smug, slightly smirking face and think: WTF? What kind of human being has that face before engaging in what they think/hope will be mass murder?

Guys, heaven help me, I can envision a time when I might need to kill people. We all can. We’re normal human beings. If it was the only way to save my husband, say, or one (or both) of the boys or their spouses, I would cheerfully (given the means to do so) mow down any number of people. BUT if I knew in advance I was going to have to do that, I can’t imagine taking posed pictures, much less posed pictures with that kind of smirk.

I’m not a good person — I’m working on it — and there are obituaries (ARAFT’S) I’ve read with distinct pleasure. But if I thought I had to kill a bunch of people, no matter how RIGHTEOUS the reason, I would be horrified, sombre. Because even among the worst kind of humans there’s usually one or two who are if not in there by accident and stupidity, at the very least redeemable. And every human being is “someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s father.” At least one of those, and often all three.

But this guy was going into a room filled with hundreds of people some of whom were “just” members of the press. Inevitably, if he had got in, some of the men and maybe a few of the crazier women would be trying to jump him, even supposing he’d got automagically rid of all of the secret service, or thought they were somehow on his side. (I mean, in the situation as it happened, I’d have shut up and moved aside while the experts cleared the room. But if an active shooter had come in, that’s the time I’d grab one of the chairs and charge, trying to smash him. And yes, it’s insane, but I know how I work, and I wouldn’t have been thinking in any sense of the word. I can’t be the only woman who runs with intent and malice towards what terrifies her, either.) So he’d not only be killing his “kill list” however much he thought they deserved it, but also a lot of innocent people.

And he’s POSING, in the style of “the assassin before he undertakes the dangerous mission” even I know, even though I rarely watch movies. And there’s that idiotic smug smirk on his face.

This made me very angry, but then I noticed the knives.

KNIVES, PEOPLE. He’s going into a room where he KNOWS a few of the people are veterans; probably a lot more of them than he knows for sure. And where at least a few of the secret service guys might object to his antics, and yet he’s taking KNIVES. A lot of knives.

What in the name of drunken goats does he think he’d do with those? Okay, yeah, you can run out of ammo (Rolls eyes) and then you take out a knife and…. what? Even if everyone left in the room is disarmed, a knife is a melee weapon that only works if there are a lot of you with knives against a few people who don’t have them. For a lone attacker, he’d be stomped flat under a bunch of boots in no time. He might be able to stab ONE person. he certainly wouldn’t have time to draw a second knife. But he has four, like he’s going to draw knife after knife.

It was then that my son’s phrase went through my mind, and I thought “He’s badly written.”

No wonder he fell for the propaganda about exploding children (which must be Iranian propaganda, yes? Because it makes no sense) and “pedophile and rapist.” This man lived in a mental fictional universe.

I recognized the pose and the stupid name he gave himself in signing his banal and pathetically deluded “manifesto” as “He’s watched a lot of stupid assassin and spy movies.” Where you know, the lone wolf goes on and kills all the bad guys and doesn’t get a scratch, or dies gloriously and “everyone claps.” He missed that in most such cases the “righteous anti-hero” wins because he has super powers, or because he’s trained for an entire lifetime or ultimately “Because the author is on his side and makes it so.” (Which is REALLY bad writing. Occasionally satisfying, but still bad.)

Apparently I was missing a whole other dimension because I’m definitely not a gamer.

Some things my friends said:

In many video games, knife kills are one-shots, while guns can take multiple hits unless you get head shots. Even against armor.
The notion being that the super skilled fighters and warriors, if they are skilled enough to get close enough to the enemy to USE the knife, are skilled enough to get past any hands thrown etc, and take out the enemy in one hit.

He said call of duty works that way. Another said that:

Also in movies. I.e. Jason Statham’s character in The Expendables series.

Others:

Hell’s bells, look at the Marvel movies. Cap and Bucky both use knives a time or two.

A thrown knife never impacts sideways or hilt first in movies or games

And it ALWAYS hits with enough force to sink the entire blade in

In reality, a thrown knife is a discarded knife.

Not quite that but notable examples, Krauser in Resident Evil 4’s Mercenaries mode is exceptionally dangerous with his knife, letting him set up his most powerful attack easily. It’s also the best weapon Leon can use to fight him in the main game. You can make quick work of The Fury in Metal Gear Solid 3 with one as well; it takes quite a bit longer to shoot him to death (including knocking him out with a tranquilizer gun).

As the hits (there was more) accummulated, I realized he is REALLY badly written. That’s why he went in Leeroy Jenkinsing it, in classical video game manner where you run past the low level NPCs to get at the important players, which apparently (WHO MADE THAT DECISION?) are more easily disposed of with knives than with guns.

And this guy, despite being trained in engineering which involves a certain amount of PHYSICS, despite having lived in the real world for thirty one years, despite EVERYTHING thought he was a game character and things would work as they do in games.

I keep thinking that people are surrounded by story, drunk with it, to the point they can’t see reality, and even I am shocked at this level of insanity.

It would be hilarious if not for what he was intending to do when he posed.

The worst part? It’s not technically insanity because there’s a lot of them like him. A lot of people who never LEARNED reality because they can’t see it past propaganda and games.

If you’re a writer, or a media creator, try not to write badly. Try not to have your characters win just because you say so.

And if you are a consumer of entertainment, remember that many things work in movies and games, and yes, even books, because the creators said so. NOT because it would happen that way in real life.

Above all you must avoid being badly written.

42 thoughts on “Avoid being badly written”

  1. I could make some kind of snarky remark about “journalists” and “innocent people” not having any logical relationship to each other, but I don’t think I will.

    This time.

    But yeah, Mr Baked-potato wanted everyone to think he was bad-ass. Would have been more effective if his suicide-by-cop note hadn’t been so… self-conscious.

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  2. I hope that the enduring image of Cole Allen (which name — as a wit on an Insty comment thread observed — sounds like a cheap brand on the shelf at Payless Shoes) remains that of him naked and wrapped in a Mylar blanket like a gay baked potato. An image which inspires scorn and derision for years.

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    2. You know, this could be an effective weapon. Any time a would be political murderer is caught–whether dead or alive–take an embarrassing photo of them. Make laughing stocks out of them.

      Among other things, it can make their first day in prison a memorable one. Sadly, it will probably be a federal prison; state prisons are much more violent.

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      1. “I want to be remembered!”

        Yep, stripped and foiled is a good look for history. And maybe we can call all of these loons ‘Cole Allen #x’.

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  5. And the soulless Democrats pile on to urge more to kill, the press in their glee repeat the same old mantra. Do not watch them, do not talk to them, to them to go to Georgetown and see what drinking the koolaid really leads to, then pray for their rancid souls. You don’t need the burden of hating them, just leave them to their own damnation.

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  6. On the “exploding children” thing, absolutely Iranian propaganda. That was the “girl’s school inside the IRGC compound” thing.

    The only of his examples I couldn’t place immediately was the “killing fisherman without a trial” thing, which is even more evidence of his idiocy and lack of knowledge of reality.

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      2. That’s what I figured. They were real big on the “they didn’t get a trial!” part. Um, you don’t kidnap soldiers in a war zone and bring them into your own territory to put them on trial for…being soldiers. That’s not how that works. That’s why the cartels were designated as terrorist organizations. It changes the ROE.

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  7. He had that expression because he was convinced that he was one of “the good people”. Filled with leftist lies and video game fantasies where he could take on “the great evil” and be a glorious hero. Didn’t matter to him if innocents got hurt or killed, like so many on the left they aren’t real people to him. And now a number of leftists have found themselves trying to decide to mourn because he failed or claim it was a false flag. These people are really sick and twisted.

    As a side note Larry (The international Lord of Hate) Correia had a great post on his blog about this idiot. Lots of good comments on there about this clown and his fantasy world.

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  8. My sons and I have had an ongoing disagreement about first person shooters even before I read On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society  by Lt Col David Grossman so I’m not surprised this clown thought it was just larping.

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  9. What in the name of drunken goats does he think he’d do with those? Okay, yeah, you can run out of ammo (Rolls eyes) and then you take out a knife and…. what? Even if everyone left in the room is disarmed, a knife is a melee weapon that only works if there are a lot of you with knives against a few people who don’t have them. For a lone attacker, he’d be stomped flat under a bunch of boots in no time. He might be able to stab ONE person. he certainly wouldn’t have time to draw a second knife. But he has four, like he’s going to draw knife after knife.

    Given that there’s 1) military, 2) politicians who don’t want to die, and 3) reporters who actually go to “places where someone will kill you,” you are correct.

    My guess is that in his head it was a giant room of NPCs about as worthless as himself, so they definitely weren’t going to throw wine bottles, chairs, and tables at him.

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    1. Note, this isn’t an exclusive list, either. This is just the folks where their “picture what you do then this happens” is definitely not going along with the “plan.”

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      1. Eh, while it’s giggle-worthy– if it’s been opened and left on the table, they can’t take it back. They have to throw it away.

        And after that bit of excitement I don’t begrudge needing to chug a bit…..

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        1. Or the staff takes it home. BTDT.

          But, Oregon Pinot Noir! I realized a couple years ago I didn’t really like PN, which,in the Willamette Valley, is kind of a handicap.

          Then I dug out a couple from my cabinet that were 9-10 years old. THOSE I liked.

          Whitehouse is listed as serving a Penner-Ashe 2022 PN at the state dinner for Charley3. That’s listed as retail around $48, so the $76 for the WCD wine (negotiated down) was either older, or more likely a more limited release.

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  10. “Moderate power is shown in violence. Extreme power is shown in levity.” —GKC

    The smirk is the pretension of superior power or position, with a dash (or a half pound) of contempt thrown in. It’s saying I’ve won this game.

    I leave it to someone else to examine the mindset that treats Death as a game to be won, rather that (at most) a game to be played grimly.

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  11. Take that collage and the pic of him after the fact with the labels “How the plan looked/How the plan worked”.

    It’s not simply that he’s badly written, it’s that he’s a minor character in a dark comedy.

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  12. I am glad that the whole thing turned out to be such a nothing burger, no one killed or even seriously injured, including the perpetrator. I know some people are upset that he’s still breathing, but the fact that he’ll have to deal with that carpet munching photo for the rest of his life strikes me as funny.

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  13. Oh, I completely agree. However, if I wrote in the woman stealing the expensive bottle of wine in the middle of the scrum, I would probably also be mercilessly castigated.

    (So far as I have seen, the idiot hasn’t been identified yet. Almost certainly one of the alphabet media figures, though.)

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  14. I was really interested in the wine thing; it underlined that the country is a collection of micro-cultures. It’s not shocking at all when your formal dinner has been cancelled mid-event to grab the wine bottles. They’ve been paid for. As Foxfier pointed out, open bottles can’t be reused. That’s why restaurants offer to sell wine by the glass, not the bottle. It’s very rare for dinners to have enough wine on the table for people to get drunk, and wine would at that point have already been poured, so I’d expect them to be at most half full.

    I’ve never done it, because the wine is usually not that good. And where the wine was that good, it was definitely not the setting to grab a bottle. An event selling tickets for a dinner at a hotel, though is very different.

    Event organizers often encourage people to take the centerpieces home with them, to cut down on the labor cost and disposal cost of dealing with dozens of bouquets.

    As to the attack, I once shocked a PTA meeting. The speaker was talking about “modern safety standards,” which at the time called for decreasing the “points of entry.” I shocked the meeting by pointing out that in the event of a mass shooting, the people who manage to flee have much higher chances of surviving. And entries are also exits.

    The scary part of the banquet was that the tables were so close together, essentially pinning guests in place. The security forces sweeping through the ballroom had to walk over tables and chairs. It would have been very challenging to flee.

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    1. Event organizers often encourage people to take the centerpieces home with them, to cut down on the labor cost and disposal cost of dealing with dozens of bouquets.

      That’s how I found out– the caterer at an event my uncle was helping to host had new guys who decided not to do the extra work of going back out to pour regularly, so he had a LOT of bottles and very little patience for dealing with it.

      (The point of the story was that the open container laws in Oregon are hilarious, it was “legally sealed” by… a caterer applied bit of tin foil.)

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      1. We have had bottles of wine sealed with tinfoil for the drive home from a restaurant, on occasion.

        As a practical matter, with open bottles of wine, what are the odds someone would slip something into the wine, as a joke? Probably not, but any hotelier who served wine from those bottles would be running an enormous risk.

        In our state diners are legally required to use a new plate each time they go to the buffet, on hygiene grounds. I frequently see people take their plates back to the buffet, but technically, they’re flouting the law.

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  15. I’m actually offended by his sheer stupidity. I live saturated in unrealistic fiction, and it would never in a million years occur to me to try to take on dozens of people with my nonexistent knife skillz. Us daydreamers need better representation than this delusional dork.

    Regarding knife kills in video games, I thiiink it’s a game balance thing. Having low-damage knives in an FPS would make them basically worthless, since you can just use guns instead. (Unlike real life, you can’t be tackled, grappled, or disarmed, so the 21-foot rule doesn’t really apply.) Meanwhile, having a short-range instakill opens up some interesting tactical options and forces players to manage spacing.

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    1. I carry a knife every day. It is there to cut things I want cut. That’s its job and it does it well because I maintain it. As a tool, it’s useful. As a weapon?

      Ye bogs and leetle beetles, there’s dumb and there’s Mr Mylar Potato Man. These are not serious people. Granted, they are trying for serious ends. Sometimes they may succeed in that, sadly. Nobody wins in that case. Not even the fools that think, briefly, that they have.

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  17. For some time I didn’t think the injunction to pray after all the discussion on arms and armor (you know the one I mean) was a little out of place, then I thought about that line about calling in artillery from a Harold Coyle novel, “The Ten Thousand,” that goes something like —Naw, we been looking for these guys [enemy HQ] all day. Let’s not mess around with the little stuff; hit ’em with the 203mm. {Please note that is a bowdlerized paraphrase.} The analogy that’s fit for church is the supposed WWII way to determine the identify of unknown unit: Send two guys out a ways—say a 1,000 yards. Have them fire over the heads of the unknown unit. {And run away.} If the response is rapid, well-aimed rifle fire, they’re British. If the unknown unit responds with a ridiculous amount of machine fire, they’re German. If nothing happens for five minutes, then the spot the two guys were shooting from is blown up by artillery or fighter-bombers, they’re American. Same idea.

    I didn’t make it to PLDC so I didn’t get that class, but regarding your brother, I believe the correct response is “Splash.”

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  18. Huh? The post has been up for how long, and nobody’s said: “That’s not a knife. This is a knife.”

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